TRACK RECORD - Auto Provisioning & Activation

Problem:

In order to reduce costs and customer turnaround time, a large service provider needed an automated approach for order fulfillment. The market-driven nature of the service provider created the need for rapid deployment and support of new service offerings. In addition, the projected order volume increase of nearly 100-fold made automation a necessity to meet the business demand.

The complexity of the problem was increased by the need to support multiple business units selling different services using a single network inventory and network infrastructure. Each business unit had its own rules for provisioning and validation.

Solution:

SSI provided an automated provisioning & activation solution based on the SSI OTR (Order TRanslator) platform that interfaces to multiple business unit ordering systems and provisions and activates orders onto a common network infrastructure. SSI OTR provided the functionality to:

Accept and validate electronic orders

Transform each business unit order into a normalized format

Perform any customer-specific pre-processing rules

Translate the order data into the necessary network element-specific configuration commands

Activate the new configuration into the network.

During the activation of services, SSI OTR enforces the partitioning of switch resources and business unit-specific provisioning rules to enable multiple orders from different business units to be processed simultaneously on the same network switch. Class 5 services implemented in this solution include:

POTS

Multi-Line Hunt Group

PBX Trunk Groups

ISDN PRI Trunk Groups

Voice Mail services

The solution was integrated into the service providerÃ­s enterprise architecture based on standards such as WEB services and CORBA. Multiple interface technologies were required to meet the existing ordering system interfaces.

Results:

Order response times were cut from weeks to hours. By streamlining order fulfillment, our client achieved lower unit costs in terms of reduced cycle time, reduced defects, and enhanced efficiency. Today, the solution is processing over 60,000 orders per day on a network of over 120 Lucent 5ESSÒ
and Nortel DMSÔ
switches. Multiple business units are interfacing their order managers to provision services using a single provisioning platform.